1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to the field of electronic dental examination and documentation and more specifically to systems and methods that can electronically evaluate detected oral features and document the results.
2. Background of the Art
Comprehensive dental examinations should be a very thorough, detailed, and well-documented procedure. However, due to the rigors associated with the volume of information that accompanies dental examinations, it is well known that dentists often do not complete a thorough examination and/or do not adequately document their findings and observations. It is generally known as well that dental examinations can and should include the evaluation of periodontal tissues and functional deficiencies in addition to dental structures and diseases. However, functional deficiencies and periodontal structures are often overlooked due to the difficulty in quantifying them or being able to map them over time.
Previous efforts to improve this field have more narrowly focused on diagnosing other dental problems (i.e., those other than functional deficiencies and/or those unrelated to periodontal tissues), patient education of the problems, helping the patient understand the problems, determining the extent of the problems, and making future prognoses. However, those efforts have all come up short with respect to electronic analysis of acquired (e.g., scanned, photographed) dental data to identify, quantify, map, and define the extent of dental structures, diseases and deficiencies, especially in relation to functional deficiencies and periodontal structures. The current state of the art is for a dentist to make note of a condition, visually estimate the extent of the problem, and then decide to either treat or monitor the condition, for example, by looking at scan results or radiographs on a computer screen. However, if the dentist decides to monitor the condition (as opposed to treating it), there is no way for the dentist to accurately determine if the problem is progressing or has progressed at the patient's next dental exam other than going by the patient's symptoms or a change in radiographs.
Therefore, a solution is needed for systems and methods that can accurately diagnose conditions associated with hard and soft dental tissues alike, including dental structures, diseases, and deficiencies, and which can evaluate, quantify and/or map such conditions, including periodontal structures and/or functional deficiencies. Such a solution should be able to quantify and map the extent of these conditions and estimate the quantity of tooth substance loss at the time of the exam or historically over time. Such a solution should also be able to process data from dental data acquisition devices (e.g., from scanners) to analyze and determine the extent of the conditions (e.g., the extent of the tooth substance loss) as well as give an accurate appraisal of the quantity of tooth substance loss (e.g., the mass or volume of the loss). Such solutions are needed to provide accurate electronic dental records and comprehensively diagnose all existing conditions. A need exists to improve the programming of current processors so that such data analysis is possible. A need also exists for systems and methods that can execute both a physiologic and functional analysis of dental tissues and structures from acquired data.